The Tale of Murasaki

8vo. Pp. [xii], 342. Pictorial card covers. B/w maps, Table of Contents, Preface, Author's Note, Dramatis Personae.

A fictional portrait of Murasaki Shikibu, an 11th-century Heian period court poet, whose work The Tale of Genji is considered the world's first novel and the most popular work of Japanese literature. Piecing together existing fragments of diary and poems, Liza Dalby frames Murasaki's words and images in a work of literary archaeology that reads with all the spellbinding magic of Memoirs of a Geisha. The only Westerner ever to have become a geisha, which she did as research for her PhD and definitive ethnography Geisha (1983), the author was a consultant on Spielberg's film Memoirs of a Geisha (2005).

"The Tale of Murasaki brings vividly to life a fascinating eleventh-century world of the creator of Japan's enduring masterpiece, The Tale of Genji. Liza Dalby is not only a most remarkable scholar of Japan – she is a keen storyteller." –Arthur Golden, author of Memoirs of a Geisha